Discuss the brief with the design teamThe brief is written from the clients perspective, but it is the design team that has to work with it as input for their design. It is thus essential that the design team fully understands what is written in the brief. To enhance this understanding, the brief should not just be handed overthrown over the wall, as it werebut should be discussed with the design team. Do they interpret the requirements in the same way as the client? Are there ambitions or demands that need to be clarified? Are there parts of the brief that they consider awkward or unfeasible? Is there information missing?There is also a responsibility for the design team here. When receiving a vague or ill-defined brief, the design team should not go into complain mode, but get proactive and start asking questions, pushing the client to clarify their ideas. Clients can benefit from this. Architects and engineers tend to have a wealth of experience from other projects and they look at projects with different eyes. They may very well see possibilities or issues that have been missed or overlooked in the briefing process and that are worthwhile incorporating into the brief.Dialogue between the client and the design team will be of particular importance in politically sensitive projects. In such projects, the briefing process tends to result in briefing documents with heavily negotiated content. Sensitivities and dilemmas will have been ironed out during rounds of reviews and approvals. In such cases, additional dialogue will be needed to help the design team to read between the lines and to uncover implicit ambitions and constraints.The celebrated architect Frank Gehry once suggested that architects should challenge the entire brief: You cant just build a building based on what the clients say, because their vision is based on whats normal. How do you get out of the normal? Youve got to question everything. Questioning everything will be neither very productive, nor necessary if the client has written a good brief. Gehry is right, however, in the sense that a clients requirements should not be seen as absolute. They are assumptions and ideas that can only benefit from critical feedback from the design team. Recommendations-Reserve time in the projects planning for dialogue about the brief with the design team.-Explicitly ask the design team whether there are things in the brief that need to be clarified, added, changed or improved.-If the design team is on board during the briefing process, make sure to involve them in the development of the brief.-If the brief is a closed, formal contract document, the contents should be tested and discussed with design experts before the document is formalized.-Make sure to have a clear procedure for communicating changes to the brief to the design team. 70